I'm not an "expert" on collecting children's books -- just someone with a hobby.
This is a place for discussing older children's books, as well as sharing info and opinions on new books that might become collectable in the years ahead.

Sunday, March 25, 2012

Sunday Brunch for March 25

Welcome to another Sunday Brunch at Collecting Children's Books. Today's blog talks about a book party I attended, asks some questions about the acclaimed new novel WONDER, and rounds up all the official author sites for Newbery winners.

My love of old children's books may be informed, in part, by a sense of nostalgia...but this month all I'm feeling nostalgic about is old-time winters. Growing up in Michigan, I got used to long, cold winters. Sub-zero temperatures. Snow on Thanksgiving. Blizzards. Snowdrifts. White Christmases. Snow Days. Ice storms. And even snow sometimes on Easter. What happened to that world? I'm still in Michigan but now we have balmy winters. Warm Thanksgivings. Green Christmases. Barely any snow. And now, in March, all the trees are in blossom and mosquitoes are out.

Yes, I know that:

but this doesn't even feel like spring. It feels more like mid-summer!

COLLECTING A LITTLE

People often ask me what children's books they should collect.

The answer, of course, is to collect what you love.

Yes, if you're collecting as an "investment," you should go after award winners and famous authors...but if you're collecting for personal satisfaction, don't follow the dollar signs, follow your heart. This means seeking out the books and authors that mean the most to you personally. Of course there are also collecting perimeters within those catetgories.

When adding a specific TITLE to your collection, the most valuable copy will be a first edition. It's even more valuable if it's signed. And of course condition may be the most important factor of all.

When collecting a specific AUTHOR, it's always a good idea to seek out their earliest (and usually hardest-to-find) books, as well as anything unusual of unique they have published.

The aforementioned Jean Little is a good example. This well-loved Canadian author has published a variety of books over her long career. A signed first edition of her very first novel, MINE FOR KEEPS, first published in 1962, generally sells for $200-$250. But I imagine her rarest book is actually IT’S A WONDERFUL WORLD, a small volume Jean Little published herself in 1947, when she was only fifteen years old. I have not seen a copy of this book for sale, but imagine it would be worth at least $300 or more.

What many readers don't know is that Ms. Little continued to privately-publish small books as Christmas presents for friends and relatives throughout most of her career. Talk about "unusual or unique" volumes to add to a private collection! And the best news is that, when these books do turn up at used bookstores, they can often by found for $25 to $50 -- perhaps because they have the look of "amateur publications" and are unknown by most readers. By if you're a Jean Little fan, these rare books are pricless.

Over a decade later, HarperCollins issued this same book in a mainstream, trade edition, and it remains one of the author's best-known works:

Wouldn't it be great to have the original volume in one's own collection? And wouldn't it be fascinating to compare both editions side-by-side?

STEPPING GENTLY OUT

Last Saturday I attended the book launch party for STEP GENTLY OUT, a beautifully written and photographed celebration of insects by poet Helen Frost and illustrator Rick Lieder.

If we're friends on Facebook, you've already heard about the experience. If we're not friends on Facebook, why aren't we? (Feel free to "friend" me at "Peter Sieruta.") The evening started off with me (accidentally?) misplacing my wallet and then sitting outside the bookstore getting up the nerve to go inside. I'm very shy to begin with, and it's even more difficult to have to interact with creative people you admire so much. But it turned out to be a delightful evening in Bookbeat's cozy gallery, as people admired Mr. Lieder's photographs on the walls and got their books signed by the kind and down-to-earth Helen Frost (a Printz Honor winner for KEESHA'S HOUSE) and Rick Lieder, who has a great love for antiquarian book illustrations. You may not be familiar with Mr. Lieder's name -- yet! -- but you are no doubt familiar with his work, as he has created the cover illustrations for a number of important children's books, including the paperback edition of Linda Sue Park's Newbery winner, A SINGLE SHARD.

I was very excited to learn that Ms. Frost's next novel-in-verse, many years in the writing, has been accepted for publication. I didn't ask her permission to report on the title and subject matter here, so I'll leave you guessing on that...but it sounds fascinating.

Here is the copy of STEP GENTLY OUT that Helen and Rick signed for me. (Notice the hand-drawn illustrations of insects that Rick added in the bottom right corner.)

Helen also gave me an unbound advance copy of the book for my collection! Here is how they signed that one:

I had also brought along with me, the author's 2011 novel:

which she also kindly inscribed:

Also attending the event was local author Sarah Miller, author of MISS SPITFIRE and the recent, wonderful THE LOST CROWN:

which she also kindly autographed:

Even though I'm sure that EVERYONE Sarah Miller meets offers a suggestion for the subject of her next novel, I couldn't resist giving her one of my own. She told me she liked it!

The fourth person in attendance was Rick Lieder's wife, Kathe Koja. We children's book fans know her best for straydog, THE BLUE MIRROR, TALK, BUDDHA BOY, and several other insightful, offbeat novels for young adults. But Ms. Koja also write for adults. Her most recent novel, UNDER THE POPPY, falls into that category:

and it's most definitely for adults, as you can tell from the inscription:

Ms. Koja's next book is a sequel to UNDER THE POPPY and I asked if she planned to return to young adult fiction. She said, "I'm still in the same house...it's just that right now I'm in another room."

Isn't that a great way of putting it?

I could think for a year and never come up with a response that perfect.

I was very much honored to spend St. Patrick's Day in the company of such talented creators.

BROWSING THE LIBRARY SHELVES....

Browsing in the library this week, I came across two intriguing books.

Have you seen this novel by Madeleine L'Engle?

Published in 1968 by Vanguard, PRELUDE is a lesser-known young adult novel in L'Engle's body of work. Unlike many of her YA books, which continue to be reprinted and read, this story of young pianist Katherine Forrester never really caught on with young readers. This may be because Katherine's story was never written for kids to begin with. The novel known as PRELUDE was originally published as the first half of L'Engle's first (adult) book, THE SMALL RAIN, which was released in 1945.

Publishers would later do the same thing to L'Engle's 1951 adult novel CAMILLA DICKINSON, re-publishing it various young adult incarnations (all called, simply, CAMILLA) in 1965, 1981, and again in 2009.

Despite these many efforts to find a young audience, CAMILLA, like PRELUDE, never gained the wide readership of many of L'Engle's young adult works. But the characters of Katherine Forrester and Camilla Dickinson clearly remained very important to their creator. Katherine turns up again, as an elderly woman, in L'Engle's 1982 adult novel A SEVERED WASP and Camilla pops up again in A LIVE COAL IN THE SEA, which was published in 1996.

This week's other highlight from the bookshelves is TEENAGERS WHO MADE HISTORY, a 1961 volume that profiles a number of famous names -- including Louis Braille and Sam Colt -- who achieved success while still teenagers.

This book is notable for being the first book written by Russell Freedman, who would go on to create a singular career writing nonfiction for children and young adults, and would later win the Newbery Medal for LINCOLN : A PHOTOBIOGRAPHY. TEENAGERS WHO MADE HISTORY displays many of the characteristics that made the author a literary giant. It would be interesting to have Mr. Freedman update this early book, some five decades after writing it, to include a few more notable young people who have "made history" since 1961.

NEWBERY AUTHORS IN CYBERSPACE

Looking for info on Russell Freedman just now, I was surprised to discover that he does not have an official website of his own. Sure, there are plenty of internet sites devoted to the author and his work (some of these are publisher "author" sites) but, as far as I can tell, he is not a master of his domain.

This got me wondering which Newbery winners have offical sites and which do not.

While they may not have "official" sites, most of the above authors do have a presence on the web, either through publisher sites, fan pages, blogs, or even Facebook fan pages. Yet, to the best of my knowledge, none maintain an official site. (Hey, if you're a web designer, maybe you should contact these authors and see if they're interested in creating an official site.)

The following Newbery winners do maintain offical sites and you can visit them by clicking the highlighted links:

It may be unfair, but we tend to look for prevailing themes and subjects in each year's crop of new books.

Recent trends have included "vampires" and "dystopian."

Based on three great new books I read this past week -- WONDER by R.J. Palacio, THE ONE AND ONLY IVAN by Katherine Applegate and BOY 21 by Matthew Quick -- this season's theme seems to be "empathy."

And people seem to be LOVING these three titles. BOY 21 got a rave in the New York Times book review. THE ONE AND ONLY IVAN was starred by Kirkus and School Library Journal. And WONDER has racked up so many stars and so much buzz that it appears to be on the fast track to the Newbery. A recent news round-up by my friend and co-writer Betsy Bird (aka Fuse #8), brings up some interesting background on WONDER's author. I was particularly struck (WONDERstruck?) by one particular comment Betsy made about the book:

"It’s smart, it’s clever, and the criticisms haven’t made a dent in it (if there are any)."

Hmm...I took that line as a challenge. Before I go on, let me again repeat that I LOVE this new novel, LOVE the character of August Pullman, LOVE his voice, LOVE the little details of family life sprinkled throughout the novel...but I'm not convinced the novel is without flaws.

Does it still deserve the Newbery? At this point in the year, I'd slap a gold star on it myself...but who knows what books are coming out next?

And before the Newbery committee makes any decisions, I'd like them to seriously discuss the following questions I had while reading WONDER. Warning -- SPOILERS AHEAD! -- so if you haven't read the novel yet, you might want to skip down to the next section.

Questions I had about WONDER:

* Did Auggie and his pals seem like fifth graders, or did they seem more like seventh graders?*Was it necessary to use the alternating first-person voices of several characters throughout the novel?

* Considering the novel is suggested for ages eight and up, do the first-person sections in the voices of three high school students seem necessary or intrusive?

* Do the voices of the several narrators sound sufficiently different from one another? (Yes, Justin's section is written in lowercase with no quotation marks, but beyond those cosmetic differences, does he sound very much different from the other characters?)

* The idea that Via's school almost produced the play THE ELEPHANT MAN makes for a powerful anecdote, but is this challenging drama -- with adult themes and nudity -- a likely selection for a high school play? (Perhaps there's a "student edition" of the play that I don't know about; some shows are published in editions for high school actors.)

* Does the scene in which Auggie switches Halloween costumes at the last minute seem believable? It's one of the most powerful sections of the book, but rather than emerging naturally from the narrative, we get Auggie switching costumes with no true motivation ("...but all of a sudden I didn't feel like wearing it. I'm not sure why...") then going to school and, again for no motivation (except to make a plot point), he doesn't go to his usual desk but "...for some reason, I don't know why, I found myself walking over to a desk near them....") My feeling is that both these moments could have been handled with far greater finesse.

* Does the climax of the entire book -- the attack in the woods -- seem a bit anti-climactic compared to other scenes in the novel?

* Maybe this is a New York thing, or a private school thing, but do schools generally have a fifth-grade graduation or commencement ceremony when the kids aren't even leaving their school but just moving up a grade?

* Finally, did anyone find the scene in which the principal repeatedly gets choked up at the graduation ceremony a little maudlin and saccharine?

Again, I really do think that WONDER is one of the year's strongest books, and bring up these questions not to undercut its acclaim, but rather to point out issues that I'd love to hear discussed. It's very possible I could be convinced to change my opinion on some of them, especially if I read the book a second time.

THIS WEEKEND

This weekend is all about THE HUNGER GAMES. The release of the new movie, to strong reviews and large advance sales, has to be a good thing for young adult literature. On Friday a librarian friend posted on Facebook that, during her shift at the reference desk that day, she had five requests for the book...and the number of holds on the book in her library was well over a two thousand!

To celebrate this weekend's most talked-about film, I can't help but post a picture of one of the most treasured items in my personal library -- a spiral bound "second draft" of the manuscript, personally inscribed by author Suzanne Collins:

LOOKING AHEAD

Finally, though this blog is often concerned about children's books from the past, we also love to look ahead to see what is coming down the pike. And just yesterday I learned that this coming summer Patrice Kindl will be releasing her first novel in more than a decade:

That's what I love about children's books. There's also something to look back on and always something new to look forward to.

5 comments:

I've always considered doing a fan page for Kate Seredy's novels; there is one for her in total, but not much material is on it. I thought of this again when I found a nice hardback copy of The Good Master at the library booksale this weekend, complete with the lovely color plates of Kate and Jancsi. I'd forgotten about the map of the countryside as end papers!

Incidentally, just wondered if you had a chance to read The Cottage Holiday and what you thought of it.

Yay for Jean Little! I checked out Look Through My Window repeatedly when I was in elementary school, and I'm made sure it keeps circulating at my public library! (Only 3 copies left in the system...) I guess sometimes I use the library to do my collecting for me. :-)

That very copy of Prelude was in my elementary school library, as was Camilla, and I read and reread them several times around 5th and 6th grade but never liked them as much as L'Engle's other books. The characters were too miserable or maybe the themes were too adult for me at that time, although I loved And Both Were Young and would still put it in my top ten.

I do think the alternating voices are necessary in Wonder. To me, that's what made it about more than just Auggie's struggles.

If I recall correctly, I assumed that he didn't want to wear his original Halloween costume because Julian had called attention to it. And I think he walked over to the group of boys out of a morbid sense of curiosity, hoping/fearing he would hear exactly what he did.

I see your point about the overt sentimentality of the graduation speech. As I reader, I was too engrossed to mind by then, but it was a bit over the top.

Also, you deserve lots of gold stars for compiling that list of Newbery websites.

About Me

I've been involved with children's books most of my life, from my earliest days working in the grade school library to my current job cataloging children's books for a university. I've published young adult fiction, as well as thousands of book reviews, and have contributed articles and essays to a number of magazines and reference volumes dealing with the topic of children's books. To see the books in my collection, please visit librarything.com/catalog/Psierut
and click on "author" to get an alphabetical-by-author view. I can be reached at Newbery13@aol.com